by Maia Tanith
“Up,” he says. Clearly not one for idle chatter.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Delia rise to her feet.
I look upwards at the ceiling of our cage in an exaggerated motion. “What’s up there?” I ask innocently.
The guard hits the side of the cage and the clang reverberates through the bars. “It’ll be your head I hit next. Get up.”
I rise to my feet and brush the dirt off my legs.
This is it.
I’m about to be led to my death.
My life flashes before my eyes. I don’t seriously regret anything I’ve done. Not even the actions that led me here, to my death.
Life is for living, fast and furious. Not for hoarding like a miser.
I took a risk on love, and I lost. I was betrayed. I am at peace with that.
That is better than living cocooned in safety and never living at all.
All that is left for me now is to die as I have lived—with courage and honor. Even though my heart is pounding, my legs are shaking, and my bowels have turned to jelly.
Delia lets out a whimper as the guard opens the door for us.
“Beauty before brains,” I say, and step out first. Mostly because I’m worried she’s frozen to the spot and I don’t want to bear witness to her beating if she doesn’t do what the guards say.
To my relief, I hear her stumble out behind me.
One guard leads the way while the second hangs back to walk behind us. They don’t need chains to keep me in control. I know full well what those guns holstered on their chest are capable of, and I have no intention of being on the receiving end of a weapon that can melt your skin right off your bones and turn your insides to mush.
We trot out obediently out onto the hard-packed dirt, then down a short flight of stairs. There’s a barred gate at the end that leads directly into the pits. After so long in the red sunshine, my eyes take a few moments to adjust to the gloom.
The guard in front cranks a lever that lifts the bars up. “Playtime,” he cackles.
The second guard pushes us forwards. Onto the baked hard dirt of the arena floor.
It’s a pitiful place. Small and dark. The walls are barely higher than my head. In the big arenas the walls are ten yards high to stop the competitors escaping.
Filthy, as they all are, and stained with the blood and piss and shit of unlucky prisoners.
I wrinkle my nose as the stench hits me.
Around the edges of the pit, a ragtag crowd is cheering us on. They stand above us on raised tiers, so they can all get a good view of my intestines being ripped out.
Great.
On the far side of the pits is another door. It’s not open yet.
I turn back to the two guards who have now cranked the iron bars of the gate closed again. “Will you provide us with weapons so we may fight with honor, oh mighty guards?” It doesn’t hurt to try.
One spits and turns away.
The other laughs, then throws his metal rod through the bars.
“I’ll be coming to get that back from your corpse,” he says, then turns around, still chuckling to himself.
I look at Delia and sigh. “You might as well take it. My claws are better, anyway.” My noble nature will be the death of me one day.
She runs to it and picks it up. The way her shoulder lowers with its weight I can tell she finds it heavy. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“Don’t bother making a show. If something comes at you, just swing it. If it’s too heavy to hit their face, swing at their ankles.” Why am I giving her advice? It will only serve to get her hopes up that we are going to live.
She nods. She looks up at the crowd around us. Something is thrown down into the arena, missing her shoulder by inches. It’s a cabbage. Moldy, too.
I grimace. “Take no note of them. Hopefully they hit whatever we’re fighting and take it out for us.”
She gives me a weak smile.
Then with a screeching noise, the door on the other side of the arena opens. A second passes, nothing comes out. Then I hear a growl. Not a growl like my kind make, but a feral noise. Like a dog. Or a wolf. Or a pack of them.
Five beasts bolt through the door before it closes shut behind them. One of the animals turns and whines, scratches at the door. A burst of flame shoots through the bars, and the dog lets go with a howl and scurries back.
They have us fighting wargs.
Oh, how ironic. It’s adding insult to injury, to be torn apart by a pack of wargs.
I hiss. I already feel highly uncomfortable. Scared, even.
“Wolves?” Delia asks.
I don’t have time to correct her. The wargs catch our scent, turn their faces to us and growl, exposing their yellowing, giant teeth. Drool foams at their mouth and falls between their lips, forming puddles at their feet. Their eyes are wild. Their jaws snap. They look hungry. And pissed off.
Chapter 3
Azr
Wargs are pack animals. They will attack us together, relying on the weight of numbers to bring us down.
As they circle closer, their matted fur, thick with giant ticks, scabs, and dried blood comes into focus.
Wild wargs. Probably rabid as well.
“On second thoughts, I know that rod is heavy, but you might want to aim for their faces,” I advise her. “These aren’t just dogs. They’re wargs. Their bite will cause an infection that is likely to kill you, if they don’t tear you apart right away. You wanna knock those pretty teeth right out of their pretty mouths.”
She doesn’t say anything back.
I look behind me to see her take a step backward.
Behind me.
“Oh that’s nice,” I remark, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Nice to know you’ve got my back.”
She looks at me with terrified eyes. Then she looks down at my hands, where my claws are drawn out to their full extent.
“Okay, true, I can probably defend us better,” I mutter back. “Still, would have been nice to at least feel that my partner is going to fight back, too.”
Then the wargs stop their circling and are running straight at us, and I don’t hear if she replies or not. One runs faster than the others. He is yards ahead of the rest, leaping over the ground like he has wings. These fuckers run fast.
I can see the spittle flying from his mouth. His paws are as big as my head. His claws are shorter than mine, though.
He hits the ground not far in front of me and I brace myself.
Then he is leaping at me—no—over me.
Towards Delia.
I reach up without thinking and rip my claws through his belly. I’m showered with a torrent of blood.
The dog shrieks and falls to the side.
He’s dead. If not right now, then he will be in a few short seconds when he finishes bleeding out.
Delia is shaking behind me and I hear the crowd roaring their pleasure at seeing an animal butchered.
The other four dogs have paused and are back to circling us warily again. They have learned to treat my claws with caution.
“Bloody animals.” I say.
Delia steps up next to me. “They’re not like the dogs at home,” she says, squinting at the bloody form on the ground. “These are-”
“I was talking about the crowd,” I reply.
My focus is on the rest of the pack. Four of them are left now. A single bite from one of them would be enough to kill.
Slowly, they draw closer, their circles around us tighter. Their ribs are showing, and I have no doubt their hunger is what drives them towards us. Hunger can be a pretty strong driver, even if you’ve just seen one of your pack die.
I lunge at one of them, breaking the circle, but he sidesteps me and rejoins the circle. Damn it. I was trying to take them one by one, but they are too canny for that. I can’t take on all four of them at once. To be honest, even gutting the first one was a fluke. If it hadn’t decided to jump over me to get to easier prey, I would have struggled.
D
elia’s back is against mine. I’m glad to have her there. That way none of the wargs can get behind us and launch a sneak attack.
Still, we are unlikely to last long. “It was nice to meet you, Delia,” I say lightly. “Shame it couldn’t have been under better circumstances.”
One of the wargs starts to shake violently. He stops circling, then whines and splutters while the drool in his mouth foams up. He shakes his head and spittle goes flying.
The other wargs have paused, too, puzzled by what is happening to their comrade.
After a few moments, he stops shaking and resumes his circling. He’s walking like he is in pain though, and his ears are drooping.
The other slow their pace to match his. They are pack animals after all. They hunt together.
Then another one starts shivering and flecks of his drool stain the ground. He sits for a moment, then gets up with a grunting bark and moves on.
“What’s wrong with them?” Delia asks without turning her head.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
All four of them seem to be affected by it. They shiver and drool, then move one, but each time they move more slowly and with more pain.
The one of them breaks rank and jumps at us.
It may be sick, but it is still fast.
Delia swings hastily with the rod and catches it in the head. “Got it,” she yells triumphantly as its body twitches in an agonizing samba in the dirt.
She’s only just clipped the side of its head. Barely enough to scratch it. Not near enough force to kill a warg. The stupid things are well-nigh indestructible.
But the warg is indisputably down, and just as indisputably dying.
A moaning whine fills the air. Then, still in their circle around us, the other three wargs are down, twitching and groaning, spittle foaming from their mouths.
Blood seeps from their ears and eyes. Their twitching falters, and then stops. They are moaning now, a low sound of pure agony that sends shivers down my spine. Not even a warg deserves to suffer like that.
Delia steps up next to me, the iron rod hanging from one hand. “What’s happening?”
I stare down, exhaling a breath I didn’t realize I’d be holding. “They’re dying.”
We stand in silence staring at them. We have done nothing, can do nothing, but they are dying in front of us.
Even the crowd has gone quiet, save from angry hushed whispers.
Finally the last of the wargs falls silent.
“Did we just win?” Delia asks. Her voice comes out in a croak.
“I think we did.”
My claws retract.
Delia drops the rod.
Behind us something creaks, and we turn to see the barred door opening.
“We just won,” I say, more to myself than Delia.
It doesn’t feel real. We were about to die. We were seconds away from being mauled and eaten by a pack of wargs.
The game is over and now the crowd goes crazy.
Angry shouts fill the air. They’ve been tricked. Tricked out of their entertainment and tricked out of the few coins it cost them to enter. They wanted to see fighting and bloodshed. They wanted to see pain and suffering and humiliation.
Something flies through the air and bursts on the ground next to me. Some sort of food item that looks like it became inedible at least a turn ago. Ugh.
We walk towards the gate, then Delia runs back and picks up the rod. When she gets to the gate, she hands it back to the guard who gave it to me just an hour before. “Thank you. It saved my life.”
He takes it back with an unhappy grunt.
Oh, for pity’s sake. She’s just happily armed one of our guards. I put my face in my hands.
The other guard spits on the ground of the arena. “Congratulations,” he says coldly. “You’re free to go.” He tosses a couple of rags at us as we climb the stairs and back out to the red dirt of the arena. “Clothes. Now get out of here before the crowd decides they want a bit more sport with you.”
Delia snatches up the garments and throws one over her head. It’s the most crudely made dress I’ve ever set eyes on. Even dirty as she was, she looked better without it.
They’ve left me a pair of thin cotton pants. I know better than to get smart to them about the lack of a jacket. I pull them on, grab Delia by the hand and start to run.
I don’t stop running until we are far away from the disappointed crowd. Far enough that nobody would bother chasing us to see if they could do a better job on us than the dead wargs could.
Even then, I don’t relax until the outline of the pits has been swallowed up by the ramshackle buildings and marketplace stalls that inevitably spring up on the outskirts of any city.
At my side, Delia is clutching my arm. I realize she’s been holding on tight for the past few minutes. I shake her arm off.
She grabs my arm again.
I shake her off again.
Then I look down at her face. She looks terrified. Just as frightened as when we were in the pits facing the wargs.
Still. Not my problem.
I shake her arm off again, and this time she crosses her arms tightly across her chest while her eyes flick around furiously, taking in the sights of the ratty marketplace.
I suppose it would be rather overwhelming for an Earthling, if the rumors are true and they really don’t have anyone apart from humans overcrowding their planet. Here we have mostly Kargans—like myself—but I can see plenty of Hyaks, with their hunched backs and striped fur, and a sprinkling of Galgogs, with their scaly skin and spiked tails. Haggling over the price of goods at one of the nicer stalls, I can see a flock of brilliantly-colored Takahees, slumming it for fun.
A baggy-skinned Lithin stomps past us, snorting with displeasure. I pull Delia out of its way. They are large and heavy with notoriously poor eyesight, and don’t care too much who they trample on.
A tentacled Coothah idles in the shadow of a doorway, and I make sure to give him a wide berth, too. Coothah have an evil reputation throughout the entire galaxy. If there is anything particularly unsavory going on, you can bet that a Coothah is behind it somehow.
Depending on what ships are in port, our planet can host a wide variety of species—and a fair representation of them are in the marketplace, shabby though it is.
The most attractive of course, are us Kargans. As a general rule we are tall and muscled, and we all are born with long retractable claws that serve as our weapons.
All the Kargans around us tower over Delia, even the most hungry and skinny of the bunch.
The marketplace is dilapidated and mangy, and quite a few of the Kargans here do look malnourished. Conditions for my fellow Kargans haven’t improved any since I last visited the planet.
The stalls scattered around us may be busy enough, but their wares leave a lot to be desired. Fruit that looks inedible is stacked in haphazard piles. On the dusty red dirt ground are huge vats of powdered root vegetables. It tastes like dirt when mixed with water into a tea, but we Kargans have been known to drink it in vast quantities for the small buzz it gives us. Drinking too much rots your guts—literally—but it’s cheaper and easier to get hold of than properly distilled alcohol. Hanging from sticks are scarves and moth-eaten carpets, the colors already worn and faded by the sun.
We pass a stall that is baking grain pancakes. My mouth waters and I see Delia look back at the stall longingly. I actually hear her stomach making a growling noise, like it’s angry she hasn’t fed it. Humans just get stranger and stranger.
“They could have thrown at couple coins down for our efforts,” I mutter. The smell of the pancakes is making me grumpy.
Delia looks at me. “Who?”
I kick at a clod of dried earth. “The crowds. Sometimes, if they’ve seen a good game, they’ll throw money down to the victors. We just got rotten vegetables.”
She nods. In truth I don’t know how much of what I’m saying is making it into her brain to be processed.
&nbs
p; I keep walking, to get away from the tempting smell of freshly baked goods.
Delia trots along behind me. “What do we do now?” she asks a few minutes later, in a quiet voice.
I give a start. “We? There is no we. Not now that we are out of there.” I gesture back the way we’ve come without looking back at her.
She runs in front of me and puts her hands up to stop me. I could push her over and keep walking, but I stop, too. It’s rather amusing watching her try to physically stop me. She’s a little twig.
“You promised.” Her voice is full of accusation.
“What did I promise?”
“That you’d take me home.”
I rub my temples. Crap. I did say that. “I wanted you to stop crying,” I say truthfully.
“It was still a promise.” Her eyes are tearing up now. They are very pretty eyes. Even if the rest of her is still a filthy mess. “You said you’d fly me back to Earth. On your spaceship.”
I smirk at her gullibility. “Sorry to break it to you, but I don’t have a spaceship. It was taken off me when I was arrested.”
Delia’s face drops. So help me gods, I actually feel a little bad for disappointing this Earthling.
I hesitate. I’m going to regret this; I can tell already. “Look, okay, I’ll help you. But if I’m gonna let you tag along, you have to do everything I say. No complaining, no arguing, no loud sniffing, and definitely no crying.”
She nods furiously.
“Okay, we’re set then,” I say. What am I getting myself into? I rub my temples again. I can feel a headache forming. “Right. We need to go find a ship to take.”
Delia swallows. “You’re—you’re going to steal a spaceship?”
“Of course.” I look around us. I’m not sure where the closest space port is here. I’m not familiar with this town at all. I’ll have to ask someone, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself either. I stand out enough as it is, wearing only a pair of light pants and still half-covered with and stinking of warg blood. I frown, trying to decide which way to head.
Delia is tugging on my arm again.
“What?” I snap.
“You can’t steal a spaceship. It’s against the law.”